WINELAND THE GOOD 



Another purely legendary feature in the description of the 

 fight is that of Freydis frightening the Skraelings by taking 

 her breasts out of her sark and whetting the sword on them 

 ("ok slettir a sverdit"). As it stands in the saga this 

 incident is not very comprehensible, and appears to have 

 been borrowed from elsewhere. Possibly, as Moltke Moe 

 thinks, it may be connected in some way with the legend of 

 the wood-nymph with the long breasts who was pursued by 

 the hunter. The mention of Unipeds and " Einfotinga- 

 land " shows that classical myths have also been adopted. 

 The idea was, moreover, widely current in the Middle Ages. 

 Thus in the so-called " Nancy " map of Claudius Clavus (of about 

 1426) we find " unipedes maritimi " in the extreme north- 

 east of Greenland. In the " Heimslysing " in the Hauksbok 

 [F. Jonsson, 1892, p. 166] and in the "Rymbegla" (1780) 

 " Einfotingar " are mentioned with a foot " so large that 

 they shade themselves from the sun with it while asleep " 

 (cf. also Adam of Bremen, Vol. I, p. 189). But in the Saga 

 of Eric the Red the incident of the Uniped and the pursuit of 

 him are described as realistically as the encounters with the 

 Skraelings. Einfotinga-land is also mentioned in the same man- 

 ner as Skraslinga-land in its vicinity. 



In reading the Icelandic sagas and narratives about Wine- 

 land and Greenland one cannot avoid being struck by the 

 remarkable, semi-mythical way in which the natives, the 

 Skraelings, are always spoken of; ^ even Are Frode's mention 



heads with an animal's skin and put on a long troll's snout with two wooden 

 jaws. But that snouts were waved with or against the sun does not give any 

 better meaning; there may be some confusion here. 



1 It is worth remarking that Gustav Storm, although he did not doubt that 

 the Skraelings of Wineland were really the natives, seems nevertheless to have 

 been on the track of the same idea as is here put forward, when he says in his 

 valuable work on the Wineland voyages [1887, p. 57, note i]: "It should be 

 remarked, however, that this inquiry [into * the nationality of the American 

 Skraelings'] is rendered difficult by the fact that in the old narratives the 

 Skraelings are everywhere enveloped, wholly or in part, by a mythical tinge; 

 thus even here [in the Saga of Eric the Red] they are on the way to becoming 

 trolls, which they really become in the later sagas. No doubt it is learned 



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